Labour party

The Labour party’s contribution to the national debate this week has included the idea that someone can be ‘superficially’ black. Rupa Huq, a Labour MP, used this phrase to describe Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. ‘If you hear him on the Today programme,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t know he’s black.’ It was a daft yet revealing comment. In her moment of unintended (and perhaps career-destroying) candour, Huq exposed a prejudice that remains pervasive in British politics. Any such suggestion is, of course, racist, and Labour could not deny it. Huq has been suspended. But she was articulating an attitude that has become widespread. She probably thought that her comments were uncontroversial for

Boris Johnson has so dominated politics for the past few years that it is hard to imagine things without him. His premiership, though relatively brief, has been both eventful and consequential. With him in Downing Street, there was a constant – and exhausting – sense of drama, with frequent cast changes and plot twists. But next week Johnson’s run as Prime Minister will come to an end. Of course, he will not disappear entirely. There will be speeches and memoirs and his comments are bound to attract attention, which will make his successor nervous. Johnson, as previous Tory leaders will attest, knows how to disrupt the news agenda. Already he

One of the favourite phrases of British political commentators is ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. As with all clichés, there is a certain amount of truth to it. But both the Tories and Labour seem intent on testing the maxim to destruction: despite everything the Tories appear to be doing to ensure they lose the next election, Labour is still only ahead by single digits in the opinion polls. No incumbent party in the western world is finding the present set of circumstances easy. The Covid shutdowns, overly loose monetary policies and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have sent inflation soaring. In France, Emmanuel Macron has no way of

It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia, because you cannot always tell with the far left what way they are going to swing. The Stop the War mob, along with 11 serving Labour MPs, have been anxious to exonerate Vladimir Putin and, in the usual fashion, blame the West. Their Russophilia has easily survived the end of communism and the transformation of Russia into a fascist state. But Croatia presents additional problems for lefties – and I know many former communists who will not visit Croatia because of the role of the Ustase during the second world

Boris Johnson has a lot of people to thank for his survival in 10 Downing Street, but Keir Starmer should be at the top of the list. The Labour leader whipped his MPs to side with the government when lockdown votes looked tricky. Labour even saved Johnson from a defeat in the Commons over vaccine passports. But Starmer’s greatest service came last month, on a day that could have finished Johnson for good. Members of the 2019 crop of Tory MPs had met to discuss their problems with the Prime Minister. The scene was set for an old-fashioned Conservative regicide. But just as senior Tories began to tell journalists that

After a relatively successful spell attempting to side itself with ordinary folk, Labour has lurched back into hardline identity politics with a particular focus on the issue of race. Over recent days some of the party’s leading figures have stoked up the idea of Tory Britain being a hotbed of discrimination. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy is leading the way with a call for a posthumous royal pardon of those who took part in an anti-slavery uprising in Guyana in 1823. According to Lammy, the pardon would help Britain find a ‘path to repair’ in regard to its ‘acknowledgment of its role in the history of slavery’. Yet given that

When a political party is hit by a crisis, the tendency these days is for both the politicians and their supporters to pretend that there isn’t a crisis at all, hunker down inside a comfortable state of denial and blame it all on a hostile media. To a degree, this has always happened — but social media has unquestionably exacerbated the process, to the extent that at any one moment a vast number of people are living under a bizarre delusion from which only much later do they emerge blinking into the sunlight. The polarising effect of social media and its echo–chamber properties have led to it becoming little more

Jack Dromey, who has died today aged 73, was a Labour MP, a trade unionist and a campaigner. He was extremely well-liked across the House of Commons: something that those who didn’t know him will have noticed immediately in the shocked tributes that have been pouring in from Westminster figures. He was a good MP, one with a clear set of political beliefs but who never let them stop him from working with those he disagreed with. He formed firm friendships with many MPs on the other side of the house, which is not something every member manages. It is a testament to the way he operated that it is

Sir Keir Starmer has rarely enjoyed such good press as he’s received for overhauling his frontbench. His Centrist Dad reshuffle saw promotions for soft-left pin-ups like Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, Wes Streeting and Lucy Powell, while Corbynista Cat Smith got told to clear her desk. It was a pitch-perfect signal to Labour moderates that they were getting their party back — not least the crucial newspaper columnist demographic — who got to see all their princes return across the water at once. Well, almost. If Sir Keir had really wanted to earn some sweet, sweet commentariat love he’d have arranged a by-election and the first available flight from JFK to Heathrow for

Keir Starmer this evening managed to scrape through his reforms to how Labour elects its leader. The victory follows a very passionate debate at the party’s conference over the policy, which will raise the qualifying threshold of support from MPs in leadership elections from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. It also drops registered supporters, who could join by paying just £3, from being able to vote in leadership elections and introduces a cut-off date for membership when a contest begins. The idea is that when there is a new leadership contest after Starmer, Labour won’t end up electing a fringe candidate. In other words, it is designed to stop

Next week, when Keir Starmer appears on stage at Labour conference in Brighton, it will be the first time he has spoken to a packed crowd of party members since he became leader. Covid restrictions meant his inaugural leader’s speech at party conference in September 2020 was delivered to an empty hall and shared via a video link. It was a blessing in disguise. Starmer had an excuse for failing to make much of an impression. He was also able to deliver criticism of the Jeremy Corbyn era without fear of boos from the delegates. His audience will be less forgiving now. Over the past year, his position as Labour

News that Rosie Duffield will be missing the Labour Party conference over threats to her personal security brings to a head an appalling situation where a female Labour MP cannot stand up for the rights of women without triggering opprobrium. Keir Starmer cannot and must not sit on the fence any longer. Maybe he is trying to sit tight and hope that this goes away? This seems unlikely: Duffield’s opponents are motivated by an evangelistic zeal to silence those who dare to disagree with them. Thankfully, Duffield isn’t taking the hint On Friday, she spoke more sense into the debate: Duffield might be the lightning rod, but the problem is